4 ms·

It's the autobahn. EV are great at acceleration, but abysmal at sustaining high speed. In Germany, a luxury sedan that has to "crawl" sub 100mph to make it to t

by usrusr 11y ago

It's the autobahn. EV are great at acceleration, but abysmal at sustaining high speed. In Germany, a luxury sedan that has to "crawl" sub 100mph to make it to the next charger completely fails the accustomed status calculus that drives luxury sales. Price-sensitive "reason over status" EVs that don't suffer that status hit from lacking high speed endurance are a much tougher nut to crack than status vehicles like the existing Tesla models. In this market segment, german carmakers are not failing significantly harder than everybody else.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
That's a reason, not an excuse. Chinese electric car companies (to just choose a random example) don't have to worry about the autobahn as it's just one market segment out of the entire globe). German car companies seem to be setting themselves be set up to be disrupted as electric cars that aren't "good enough" slowly grow from the bottom up to be better in multiple dimensions.
- usrusr 11y ago
  I think reasons are a lot more interesting than excuses. Autobahn has been a highly effective marketing stunt for decades, now it's biting them back because it makes it quite difficult to do a top-down EV introduction like Tesla is doing.
this_user 11y ago
> It's the autobahn. Most people don't drive on the autobahn most of the time. And most of it has speed limits anyway. Even when you are using a part that has none, you may not be able to drive that fast due to traffic. I don't know what kind of idea you have about this, but very few people will drive their vehicle at top speed even if it is possible. First of all, it becomes much more stressful to operate the car for an extended amount of time. Secondly, you can be held liable for accidents while driving at above the suggested speed of 130 km/h even when you are not at fault. There may be a few people who would consider this an argument but most won't consider this kind of thing.
- usrusr 11y ago
  Maybe i was not clear enough: i wasn't talking about why EV are impossible in Germany (they are not), i was talking about why the specific Tesla strategy of starting with a fast-looking luxury sedan (or a roadster, if you want to nitpick) and slowly working down from that would have been disastrous for german car makers. The main purpose of a luxury sedan is to project status and that just won't work so well if you have to get in line with the weakest of bread-and-butter cars on a cross country drive (which is a major use case in Germany, because there are no distances long enough to really get used to the american pattern of domestic flight + rental car). > very few people will drive their vehicle at top speed even if it is possible It's true, you rarely see a car in the Model S price range anywhere close to their top speed. They are just too fast for that, the lanes are starting to feel so damn narrow when you are approaching 200 km/h. A seasoned "business class" driver would rather put the car on cruise control at 180. But whenever traffic and local limitations are permitting, it is just as rare to see a really expensive car lurk along anywhere close to as slow as those 130. And depending on which part of the country you are driving in, these situations are far from rare.

by usrusr 11y ago

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

That's a reason, not an excuse. Chinese electric car companies (to just choose a random example) don't have to worry about the autobahn as it's just one market segment out of the entire globe). German car companies seem to be setting themselves be set up to be disrupted as electric cars that aren't "good enough" slowly grow from the bottom up to be better in multiple dimensions.

usrusr 11y ago
I think reasons are a lot more interesting than excuses. Autobahn has been a highly effective marketing stunt for decades, now it's biting them back because it makes it quite difficult to do a top-down EV introduction like Tesla is doing.

this_user 11y ago

> It's the autobahn. Most people don't drive on the autobahn most of the time. And most of it has speed limits anyway. Even when you are using a part that has none, you may not be able to drive that fast due to traffic. I don't know what kind of idea you have about this, but very few people will drive their vehicle at top speed even if it is possible. First of all, it becomes much more stressful to operate the car for an extended amount of time. Secondly, you can be held liable for accidents while driving at above the suggested speed of 130 km/h even when you are not at fault. There may be a few people who would consider this an argument but most won't consider this kind of thing.

usrusr 11y ago
Maybe i was not clear enough: i wasn't talking about why EV are impossible in Germany (they are not), i was talking about why the specific Tesla strategy of starting with a fast-looking luxury sedan (or a roadster, if you want to nitpick) and slowly working down from that would have been disastrous for german car makers. The main purpose of a luxury sedan is to project status and that just won't work so well if you have to get in line with the weakest of bread-and-butter cars on a cross country drive (which is a major use case in Germany, because there are no distances long enough to really get used to the american pattern of domestic flight + rental car). > very few people will drive their vehicle at top speed even if it is possible It's true, you rarely see a car in the Model S price range anywhere close to their top speed. They are just too fast for that, the lanes are starting to feel so damn narrow when you are approaching 200 km/h. A seasoned "business class" driver would rather put the car on cruise control at 180. But whenever traffic and local limitations are permitting, it is just as rare to see a really expensive car lurk along anywhere close to as slow as those 130. And depending on which part of the country you are driving in, these situations are far from rare.